


24 Years

by Jade_II



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-11 20:33:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9017785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jade_II/pseuds/Jade_II
Summary: 24 years on Darillium without some kind of mystery to solve? Impossible.





	

“Okay,” the Doctor says. “Open your eyes.”

 

River does as she’s told.

 

Under the ever-starry sky of Darillium stands a house festooned with fairy lights, small but with large windows reflecting the starlight and walls painted in the warmest hue of cinnamon. It stands in a little garden filled with night-blooming Darillian flowers, and the doorway is barred by a huge red ribbon tied in a bow.

 

The Doctor guides her over to it and wraps her hand around one of the ends, pulling with her until the bow comes undone and the two halves of the ribbon flutter to the ground on either side.

 

“I wanted to gift wrap it,” he says. “But I couldn’t find a box big enough.”

 

River laughs, pushing the door open and stepping inside. “It’s lovely,” she says, stopping in the hallway. Wooden floors, furnished but only sparsely; plenty of room still for her to leave her mark.

 

“Living room, kitchen, bathroom, bedroom,” the Doctor reels off, gesturing briefly at each door in turn. “It’s not much, but it could be home. Oh, and the best part—“

 

He pushes past her into the bedroom and she follows, taking note of the large and comfy-looking bed and the front window with the view of the Towers in the distance; she’s drawn to it immediately, but the Doctor is smiling now and looking up at the ceiling. At the skylight.

 

“The stars,” he says, and she knows he’s right. This can be home.

 

* * *

 

The bed is indeed very comfortable, River thinks, stretching when she wakes a few hours later. The stars are still looking down on her and she looks back, identifying them all and wondering what names and stories the Darillians have for their constellations. She’ll have to look them up. You can find out a lot about a culture from what they see in the stars.

 

The Doctor isn’t here – the space next to her is empty and cold, the pillow squashed into an odd shape and half falling off the bed. This isn’t unusual, but somehow she had hoped that perhaps, with his new body, with the significance of this night, he might have decided that staying could be possible.

 

Obviously not.

 

River is halfway through a sigh when the smell of eggs and croissants hits her nostrils. Moments later the Doctor walks through the door carrying a tray and a small vase of flowers, which he deposits on the bedside table next to her. “Breakfast, dear?”

 

River laughs with delight, pushing herself up into a sitting position. “Where did this come from, then? Paris? Or is there somewhere local?”

 

“Neither.” Carefully, he places the tray on her lap and smiles – she’s never known him to look so tender, so continuously. “I cooked.”

 

He beams, sitting down next to her, and she stares. “You cooked? Should I be worried?”

 

“Well the croissants were really boring, I may have cheated a bit with them; so much rolling, so much waiting, I couldn’t take it! But they won’t poison you.”

 

“You _made_ croissants,” she says incredulously.

 

“And I’m never doing it again, so don’t even ask. I don’t know how people do it without a time machine, surely they’d die of boredom before they ever made it to the oven…”

 

“You made croissants,” she repeats.

 

“Yes! Now go on, eat up, they’re best fresh.”

 

Keeping her eyes trained on him just in case he’s some kind of impostor – he never did explain exactly how he got that new face, did he? – River carefully tears the end off one of the croissants and pops it into her mouth.

 

“Oh my.” River blinks. “This is _really_ good.”

 

“It is, isn’t it?” His grin widens. “The first batch was rubbish, I had to go back and try again, but then I got the hang of it.” He pauses. “Just don’t go in the kitchen.”

 

He makes her breakfast every day after that, a different and often extravagant dish every time. It’s like he’s finally found something constructive to do with all that time when she’s asleep and he’s rearing to go. River approves.

 

* * *

 

The first three days – ‘day’ being a period of twenty-four hours imposed by the world’s human inhabitants and nothing to do with its actual cycle – they spend mostly in bed. River’s pretty sure they’ve never spent such a long stretch in bed together before, apart from that time with the time loop on Exilus Epsilon, but it’s really quite fun. Eventually and inevitably however they both find themselves itching to _do_ something – other than each other, anyway – and they get up and get dressed.

 

They step out of the house with no particular destination in mind, but the centre of their little town seems the obvious place to start.

 

It’s not a long walk but it is a nice one. The local architecture is pleasingly quaint, with cobbled roads adding to the effect, and the Towers are visible from almost anywhere. Because of this the town is a bit of a tourist trap, but apparently it’s not quite so popular during the dark years. Anyway, River has always liked tourists. They’re so wonderfully gullible; she can’t wait to become more of a local here and have some fun with them.

 

Perhaps not with the Doctor around. He might not approve.

 

There’s a market close to the town centre, with stalls selling everything from ice cream to silverware. The two of them stroll through it comfortably, pointing out various knick-knacks to each other and commenting on them under their breath.

 

River can’t resist nicking something.

 

They stop at a stall selling jewellery and River oohs and aahs and asks a million questions about the pieces on display – and then she reels the Doctor in by innocently pointing out some obvious errors in the labelling. It doesn’t take much to wind him up and get him into ranting mode, and while he’s going on about how the stones in these brooches couldn’t possibly be from Mars because the subterranean conditions would be all wrong for that kind of texture River slips a piece from the other side of the table into her pocket.

 

Eventually the vendor appears to realise that the Doctor isn’t going to be placated, so he makes some half-arsed excuses and packs up his things half an hour before the market’s official closing time.

 

The Doctor is smug and irritated at the same time, at least until he finds a food stall to his liking. Then he’s just smug.

 

They wander home munching on delicious cheesy pastries, and River hooks her arm through his.

 

“I could’ve bought that for you, you know,” the Doctor says, leaning in to speak softly in her ear.

 

River grins. “You’re so boring.”

 

“You shouldn’t steal.”

 

“Oh, please. You saw for yourself how overpriced all that rubbish was. Someone like that deserves to be taken down a peg.”

 

“Which is the only reason you did it, of course.”

 

“Of course.”

 

“Go on, then.” He nudges her. “Let me see.”

 

River rolls her eyes, but she pulls the brooch from her pocket and holds it up to the light.

 

It shows the Towers, picked out in silver, against a background of ochre-coloured stone.

 

“Shiny,” he says, and presses a kiss to her temple. “My bespoke kleptomaniac.”

 

“Oh, shut up.”

 

“Make me.”

 

“I will.”

 

 

* * *

 

The first time she steals the TARDIS from Darillium is a spur-of-the moment decision.

 

They’ve just got back from another trip to the market and the Doctor is in the kitchen doing something obscene to a duck, while River has wandered into the garden to listen to the strains of the Towers’ song she can hear even from this distance. The planet’s rings arching across the sky are particularly beautiful tonight. It’s all very nice. It’s all been very nice ever since they got here.

 

It’s all a bit too nice.

 

And the TARDIS stands next to her in the starlight, whispering to her of far-off worlds where peril and adventure await.

 

River looks back at the house, at the Doctor dancing around the brightly lit kitchen with a sprig of some kind of herb in his hand. The one he spent thirteen mind-numbingly dull minutes quizzing the market stall owner on the best way to use.

 

He’ll never know.

 

Biting her lip, River barely hesitates before she pushes open the blue door and dances on tiptoes into the control room, and she takes the TARDIS silently away to the far-off unknown.

 

* * *

 

She steps out onto a high platform bathed in bright sunlight, looking down upon rows and rows of the tallest bookcases she’s ever seen.

 

It steals her breath, and she walks carefully forward to survey the scene. Books upon books, as far as the eye can see, and not another soul to be found.

 

“River.”

 

Ah. Except one.

 

There’s something subdued about his voice but she recognises it instantly all the same, and she turns without surprise to see her floppy-haired, baby-faced husband.

 

He’s sitting cross-legged on the platform, tinkering with a screwdriver. Her screwdriver, she realises abruptly – the one his older self gave her only two weeks ago.

 

“Hello, sweetie,” she says, moving towards him.

 

The Doctor swallows, nodding at the TARDIS. “Am I in there?”

 

River shakes her head. “Not at present.” There’s another TARDIS, she sees, not far away from where he’s sitting. “Am I in there?”

 

His answer is far more concise. “No.” He looks away. “Where are we for you?”

 

“Darillium.” She watches his face, sees him wince, and she wishes she could tell him more. “You?”

 

The Doctor grimaces, and there’s a world of pain in his face. “Manhattan. A while ago.”

 

River narrows her eyes, and she goes to kneel before him. “How long a while?” she asks.

 

Finally he looks up at her again. “Seventy years.”

 

“Seventy…?” she whispers, taken aback.

 

The Doctor licks his lips. “But that wasn’t the end,” he says hopefully.

 

River reaches for his hand and squeezes it, hoping to give him what comfort she can. “Not quite, sweetie.”

 

“Stay with me for a while,” he says, squeezing back.

 

She doesn’t tell him that she’s just left him. How could she?

 

“Of course,” she says instead. “Here? Where are we, anyway?”

 

“The Library. You must’ve heard of it. All the books ever written – a whole planet of them.”

 

“Sounds marvellous.”

 

The Doctor laughs softly, but she can’t see any joy in his face. “I hope so. But you shouldn’t stay here.” He seems to make a decision, and pulls her to her feet. “Have you ever seen the lava monsters on Kalkis IV?”

 

“No,” she says, immediately intrigued.

 

He grins, and it’s like watching light wash back over him. “Do you want to?” he says, suddenly eager and energetic again.

 

“Always,” she promises.

 

And he whisks her away in his TARDIS, and they run from monsters and make love on the volcanic plains under the open sky, and when they part she promises him that he’ll be okay, and he says the same to her.

 

* * *

 

When River finally gets back to Darillium the Doctor is still preparing the duck, and she watches him through the window for a good long while before she goes back into the house.

 

The difference between him and the younger Doctor she’s just left is immense. Younger him was full of angst and pain even when he was happy and trying to hide it; Scottish Doctor seems to be just enjoying the moment and not worrying too much about what will come after.

 

But River worries.

 

Having twenty-four years to play with is a gift, of course it is. But twenty-four minutes or twenty-four years, at the end of it all she’ll still be left without him. She tries not to think about it, but she does. Far too much, and it’s only been two weeks.

 

She’s got to get this under control or it’s going to drive her crazy long before their time here is up.

 

Determined, she joins the Doctor in the kitchen and watches him work his magic.

 

* * *

 

There’s a party at the town hall to celebrate the anniversary of the first human setting foot on the planet, and neither of them can resist the opportunity to get dressed up and go dancing.

 

A storm is brewing when they step outside and set off, and strains of the Towers’ song are in turn amplified and blown away by the wind.

 

River has always loved a good storm.

 

They walk into town arm in arm, both grinning ridiculously first at each other and then at the other people converging on the hall, who all grin back at them as though they’ve been infected by some dreadful grinning disease. It’s really quite sweet.

 

The noise of the crowd and then of the music drowns out the sound of the Towers as they reach the building, and River feels a momentary pang of loss as they climb the steps and go inside.

 

“I don’t like the band much,” she remarks under her breath, glaring at said band as soon as she and the Doctor reach the ballroom.

 

“Now, now, dear,” the Doctor admonishes. He grabs a tray off a passing waiter, who looks annoyed but doesn’t say anything. “They’re only just getting started. Have a canapé.”

 

River does her best to smile and to encourage her good mood to come back, and she nods and tries a cracker spread with some kind of blue paste and sprinkled with purple flaky bits. “Mmm,” she says, surprised. “That’s quite good.”

 

“See?” The Doctor grins at her. “Things are looking up already.”

 

“I don’t know.” River looks around the room, at the dull people swaying to the dull music, and wonders if she really wants to waste any of their precious time in a place like this. “It could do with a bit more shooting and screaming, I’d say.”

 

The Doctor looks at her for a long moment with an expression which is completely indecipherable on his still new face. Then he turns abruptly, grabs her by the arm, and pulls her back towards the exit.

 

“What are you doing?” River demands, bewildered.

 

“I’ve got a better idea,” he declares, weaving his way through the stream of people coming from the opposite direction and balancing the canapé tray over their heads with his free hand.

 

“What do you mean?”

 

The Doctor doesn’t answer as they squeeze their way back through the double doors and into the night, but once they’re free he pulls her across the cobbles and repeats, breathlessly, “I’ve got a better idea.”

 

“Which is?” she blusters.

 

“Patience, Professor Song.” He tuts. “All will be revealed.”

 

He leads her to the outskirts of the town, and as the wind grows stronger so once again does the Towers’ song. For a moment River closes her eyes, trusting the Doctor to guide her, and she drinks in the music and the wind and the promise of rain.

 

Then abruptly the ground under her feet turns from bumpy cobblestones to damp sand, and she stumbles in her heels before the Doctor’s grip can tighten enough to pull her upright.

 

She opens her eyes to see him grinning at her like a madman.

 

“You might want to change into some more comfortable footwear,” he says, nodding at something behind him.

 

River turns to see the Towers in the distance, unobscured at last, and the only thing between her and them the wide, flat expanse of sand.

 

“Perhaps we can dance to something more to your liking,” the Doctor says, eyes twinkling.

 

“Oh…”

 

Without another word, River kicks off her shoes, hooks them with her fingers and takes off at a run, leaving the Doctor shouting behind her and hurrying to catch up.

 

The thing about night on Darillium is that it’s never really _dark._ There are plenty of stars in the sky, even if they weren’t in the middle of a nebula whose dust and gases colour the whole skyscape. There are the two moons as well, one large and one smaller but both lighting up brilliantly when they’re properly aligned with the sun. And of course, to crown it all, the rings of the planet arch over them, glittering like celestial jewels. Even now, with the storm clouds gathering, the rings are as yet unobscured, facing them off from the opposite horizon.

 

So River runs across the sand as the wind howls more fiercely and the first drops of rain begin to fall, and she laughs with the beauty of it all.

 

The Doctor’s answering laugh echoes from behind her and she finally turns to wait for him. He’s got his own special brand of ridiculousness as usual as he hurtles towards her, still balancing the canapé tray on the palm of one hand – and he doesn’t even seem to have dropped any of them yet. River is impressed. He never would have managed that in his last body.

 

At last he catches up with her, and she reaches for his hand again as they both gaze up at the looming Towers. Nothing tarnishes their song now, and River closes her eyes again to let the music wash over her.

 

The Doctor lets go of her hand for a moment and she hears a soft rattling sound as he puts the tray down on some convenient rock. When he returns to her he interlaces his fingers with hers, raising them to his lips to kiss her knuckles.

 

“Care to dance?” he asks, as the first roll of thunder growls over them.

 

River chuckles, stepping forward to rest her head on his shoulder as his free hand snakes around her waist to pull her closer. They sway gently to a song that seems made just for them, alone together out here in the brilliant dark, and River curls her toes in the cool sand and her fingers in the warm fabric of the Doctor’s suit, and she’s hard pressed to imagine anything better than this.

 

She almost imagines they could dance until dawn.

 

 

* * *

 

River steals the TARDIS again. Of course she does.

 

Sometimes she’ll go somewhere on her own, but very often she’ll find some version of the Doctor waiting for her when she steps out of the doors.

 

Today she finds him on Calderon Beta, not her intended destination but the TARDIS has dumped her here anyway.

 

It isn’t their usual night but he is in their usual spot, two hundred years before any human ever set foot on this planet, let alone thought of opening a chip shop. The tree is a lot smaller, but considering how huge it is in the future that’s not really saying much. The Doctor has found himself a nice little perch on one of the thicker branches, and he looks down when he hears the rustling of the leaves as she climbs up to join him.

 

“Hello sweetie,” she says, taking him in. He’s fiddling with a neural relay, sad and Scottish and rather surprised.

 

“River…?”

 

“That’s me.” She sits down beside him – it’s a little snug but she doesn’t mind, and he doesn’t seem to either.

 

“Where did you come from?” He clutches the dead relay tightly in his hand, seems to realise what he’s doing, and hides it quickly in a pocket.

 

“Darillium, about seven months in. You?”

 

“Darillium was a while ago for me,” he confesses, and she’s about to point out how _good_ that is when he frowns and asks, “How did you get here?”

 

River shrugs. “The TARDIS brought me.”

 

“You mean you _stole_ my TARDIS from right under my nose?”

 

“She was a willing accomplice, I assure you.”

 

“River…!” he says indignantly – and then stops. A moment later a grin spreads over his face. “That’s brilliant.”

 

She laughs. “I’m glad you think so.”

 

“I hope you do it a lot.”

 

“Well, now I have your permission, sweetie…”

 

He scoffs. “As if you ever needed my permission for anything.”

 

River winces, watching him watch the stars. “You’re talking about me in the past tense,” she points out softly.

 

The Doctor echoes her wince, and he closes his eyes and lowers his head. “Sorry.”

 

“It’s okay.”

 

“No, it’s not.”

 

She’s not really about to argue with him on that point.

 

“What are you doing here?” she asks, changing the subject. “It’s the wrong night.”

 

That makes him smile. It’s not really a happy smile, but it’s something. “I like being here when that night hasn’t happened yet. Right here, in this time and place, it’s all still to come.” He looks up at the sky again and sighs wistfully. “Those stars have yet to light up your eyes, this breeze has yet to blow your hair in your face… that branch has yet to be desecrated…” He points into the foliage with a smirk, but soon sobers. “I miss you, River Song,” he whispers.

 

River blinks back tears – honestly, he’s such a sap in this body. “I’m right here.”

 

“You need to go back to Darillium.”

 

“I do,” she agrees, taking his hand. “But not yet.”

 

That seems to placate him a bit, thank goodness. “Seven months,” he says.

 

River sighs, swinging her legs and contemplating the distance beneath them to the sea below. It looks like a long way, but that is deceiving in the same way that twenty-four years sounds like a long time. “Half a year gone already. Two point four-three percent of our time together.”

 

“Don’t do that,” the Doctor chides gently.

 

“Don’t do what?”

 

“Don’t focus on what’s gone. You’ve got so much still left.”

 

“And when I don’t?” she asks, attempting to smile.

 

His answering smile is just as tenuous. “Then you come and see me again.” He clears his throat. “Why did you come?”

 

River hesitates. What can she say that won’t hurt his feelings?

 

“Seven months,” he says again. “As I recall, that was right around the time that things got interesting.”

 

That gets her attention.

 

* * *

 

“Sweetie,” River says later, back on Darillium, snuggled up beside him in their starlit bed and trying to stop listening to her internal countdown _; twenty-three years, four months, three weeks and six days_ , she tries not to tell herself.

 

“Hmm?”

 

She sighs. Why is this so difficult?

 

“I know this is a lovely house and a lovely little town and everything…” she begins.

 

“Mmmhmm,” he replies. Not exactly helpful.

 

“But don’t you think,” River soldiers on, trying to hold on to what his older self told her, “that perhaps twenty-four years of this might just be a little bit… boring?”

 

The Doctor sighs, and when he doesn’t reply straight away River’s stomach ties itself in knots – she doesn’t want to hurt him, she loves him and she loves the life they’ve been building here, but—

 

“Oh, thank God,” the Doctor breathes.

 

Slowly, the knots begin to untie. “What?”

 

“You’re right,” he says, turning abruptly to look her in the eye. “Where do you want to go?”

 

A moment later he’s half dressed and she’s still only half sitting up in bed. “What, now? Seriously?”

 

“Why not?” He pushes his feet into his shoes and spreads his arms. “No time like the present, the universe is our oyster, all that.”

 

“You’ve just been waiting for me to say something, haven’t you,” River says, stuffing a pillow under her arms and resting her chin in her palms. She feels a sudden urge to torture him a little bit.

 

At least he doesn’t deny it. “I thought it would happen a lot quicker, to be honest. Seven months! I almost said something myself.”

 

“Then why didn’t you, you idiot?” she demands.

 

“Well, I didn’t know how you’d feel about it.”

 

“You could have asked.”

 

“I didn’t know how you’d react.” His tone turns a bit more serious, a bit apologetic. “I’ve discovered recently that I’m not as in tune with your feelings as I once liked to think.”

 

“Doctor.” River sighs, shaking her head, and rolls onto her back to stretch the interrupted sleep from her limbs. “You’re an idiot.”

 

“Yes,” he says, a lot more fondly than she would have expected. “I think we’ve established that.”

 

“Let’s go somewhere where we can see the sun,” she says.

 

The Doctor brightens. “I know just the place.”

 

* * *

 

“This isn’t exactly what I had in mind, sweetie,” River complains, stomping through the snow.

 

The Doctor grins, totally at ease in his cold-weather gear and sunglasses, and gestures expansively at the expanse of… white.

 

That’s all there is. Bright white snow on the ground and the sun in the bright purple sky. She’s not exactly impressed.

 

“You don’t know where we are,” the Doctor says.

 

“Where are we?” River asks, not bothering to deny it.

 

“Darillium’s south pole!”

 

He says it like it’s supposed to be exciting, but River is becoming less and less excited with each step she takes in her unwieldy snow boots. “We haven’t even left Darillium?”

 

The Doctor stops, staring at her. “You don’t know what’s here, do you?”

 

“A lot of snow, apparently. I was thinking more of sand and sea when I told you that I wanted sun, you know.”

 

The Doctor’s grin is back in an instant. “I know something you don’t know.”

 

“You know a lot of things I don’t know, sweetie.”

 

“About archaeology?”

 

River narrows her eyes. “What do you mean?”

 

“The polar ruins of Darillium? Ringing any bells?” At her blank look he continues, “The Towers tend to overshadow everything else, don’t they. But under here…” He stomps empathetically on the snow. “There’s a whole city.”

 

River has her scanner out and sweeping the landscape before he’s even finished talking. “You’re right,” she says.

 

“Of course I’m right.”

 

Ignoring that, she continues, “I’m not sure I’d call it a city, darling, but there are certainly the remains of a large village under our feet.” She points at a spot about a hundred yards to the west of them. “There’s some kind of tower over there, we should be able to reach it if we dig a bit.” She reaches for her utility belt. “Good thing I brought my trowel.”

 

The Doctor scoffs. “I brought the TARDIS, I could materialise us right inside the ruins. No digging required.”

 

“And where’s the fun in that?”

 

She trudges off without waiting for an answer, but she can practically hear him rolling his eyes before he follows. Striding in front of him, she allows herself to smile just a bit in appreciation of what he’s just done for her. She knows he’s not a fan of archaeology, and yet this is the first place he’s brought her. He’s really going all out.

 

River fiddles with the settings on her trowel as she approaches the spot above the tower, and waits for the Doctor to catch up with her. Only when he does, and just before he comments on her choice of tool again, she aims at the snow.

 

It melts away in a perfect circle, and River smirks at the Doctor before she looks down to see what she’s uncovered.

 

She gasps, and turns back to a gaping Doctor.

 

“That’s just like one of the Towers,” she points out needlessly.

 

He nods, uncharacteristically speechless.

 

“Almost identical,” she says, scanning it for confirmation. “How is that possible?”

 

“You’re the archaeologist,” the Doctor says. “Maybe your trowel can tell you the answer.”

 

River rolls her eyes. “I’ll have you know my grandfather gave me this trowel. There’s no need to make fun.”

 

The Doctor blinks. “Brian Williams gave you a sonic trowel?”

 

“Well.” River shrugs. “I may have upgraded it a bit from the original. Now stop trying to distract me from the fact that you have no bloody clue what’s going on here.”

 

“I think whatever went on here was a long time ago.”

 

“Yes.” River consults her scanner. “About five thousand years, going by the snow layers.” She looks up at him. “That’s two thousand years before anyone ever set foot on this planet.”

 

“Anyone that we know of.”

 

“Precisely.”

 

River surveys the scene, drinking in the sunshine and the snow and the ruins, and she grins.

 

“I do love a mystery.”

 

* * *

 

“I hate mysteries,” she declares, clenching her fists in frustration. She looks over at the Doctor, who looks far too amused for his own good. “Please tell me we solve it.”

 

“When are you now?” he asks.

 

“Nine months,” she says candidly.

 

“Ha.” He grins, and she wants to punch him – she’s never liked it when he goes all smug about his spoilers. “Ask me again when you’re closer to twenty-four years.”

 

“Seriously?”

 

“Am I ever not serious?”

 

“Is that even a serious question?” River counters, bringing one hand up to her hip and turning away from him. They’re in a huge, cavernous room full of makeshift control panels, like someone not too concerned with aesthetics has assembled them as and when they’ve been needed. The domed ceiling is covered with a mess of wires and circuits, as if they’ve just been shoved there out of the way, a necessary evil.

 

“Of course not,” he says dismissively, stepping towards her and following her gaze.

 

“What is this place, anyway?”

 

“…Ah.” The Doctor turns away again, suddenly tight-lipped.

 

“Doctor.”

 

“Spoilers.” He shrugs, pulling his screwdriver out and tossing it in the air – he even manages to catch it again. “Give me your screwdriver.”

 

“What for?” she demands, reaching into her pocket and handing it to him.

 

“Fine-tuning.”

 

“What, again?”

 

“I strive for perfection.”

 

River scoffs. “Since when?”

 

The Doctor doesn’t answer, sweeping across the room instead to plug both screwdrivers into some kind of port in one of the consoles. With him engrossed for the moment, River takes the opportunity to have a closer look at her surroundings.

 

Spoilers, eh?

 

The space is absolutely huge, and it reeks of computers – _advanced_ computers – and of the Doctor. He’s obviously spent quite some time here, then; working on some kind of project?

 

On his own? She hopes not, but she suspects so.

 

Gravity is a tiny bit higher than Earth normal, just like Darillium – but they can’t still be on Darillium, can they? What possible reason could he have for staying here, after…?

 

She doesn’t want to think about that, and thankfully the Doctor brings her attention back to the here and now when he hits the console with his fist and swears under his breath.

 

“Something wrong, sweetie?” River asks, crossing the room to stand beside him.

 

“No. Nothing.” He grimaces, pulling her screwdriver from the port and handing it back to her. “There you go.”

 

“You’re lying,” River observes, tucking the screwdriver back into her pocket without looking away from his face.

 

“Rule one,” the Doctor replies tightly, leaning heavily on the console.

 

“What are you working on?”

 

He turns to look at her, frowning, and she doesn’t expect him to answer – though what spoilers there could possibly be once their last night together is over she can’t imagine. But he surprises her, and replies with a sigh, “I’m trying to combine two signals. Different sources, different formats. I need to put them back together as a coherent whole.”

 

“Back together? So they were together before?”

 

He nods, exhaling forcefully.

 

“And they were separated how?”

 

“Different aspects, recorded at different times by different technology…”

 

“Presumably you’ve tried interpolating the signals.”

 

“Everything from linear to Gaussian to Clomian, yes.”

 

“What about the technology? You’ve got a time machine, can you go back and change it to something more suitable?”

 

The Doctor’s eyes narrow. “Ha.”

 

That’s all he says, so River queries eventually, “Good ha?”

 

He grins. “Excellent ha.”

 

River’s about to turn back to the console to get to work, but the Doctor grabs her by the shoulders and kisses her, and by the time they come up for air her priorities have shifted entirely.

 

* * *

 

“So are you ready for the next part of the puzzle?” the Doctor says, several weeks later as they eat breakfast in their bed under the stars.

 

“Already three steps ahead of you, sweetie,” River says breezily, sipping her coffee.

 

His face falls. “You know.”

 

“Know what?”

 

“What I’m about to tell you.”

 

“Well, I am a time traveller.” He looks so disappointed that she laughs, elbowing him in the side. “And I thought I should read up on this increasingly weird planet we’ve ended up on. Can’t let you get the drop on me too often, you know.”

 

He raises his eyebrows – she’s not going to tell him how much she likes the eyebrows, she’s _not_ – and looks expectant. “Well?”

 

“Well what?”

 

“What is it that you know already?”

 

“Where should I start?”

 

“Well, the identical ruins at the north pole are probably a good place. Quite cold at the moment though, I should think.”

 

River gives up the act – this subject matter is interesting enough all on its own. “How identical are they, though? How thorough are the analyses?”

 

“Not as thorough as anything we could do.”

 

“No.” River sighs. “I thought you might say that.”

 

* * *

 

Darillium’s north pole is _cold._

 

The south was really quite pleasant compared to this.

 

It’s cold and it’s dark and it’s windy and then, just for variation, there’s some more cold.

 

“I hate you!” River screams above the blizzard.

 

“No you don’t!” the Doctor yells back. At least she assumes that’s what he’s yelling; his voice is muffled by his cold weather gear.

 

“Let’s get this over with!” she demands.

 

It’s difficult to operate her hand scanner wearing her thick gloves, but she’s damned if she’s going to take them off. Eventually she manages to get good enough readings to set up the triangle of high-resolution magnifiers she’s hauled along for the trip; after that they wade through the ever-deepening snow back to the TARDIS. No showing off with the trowel at this pole – all River wants is to get back inside where her goggles won’t be caked with snow again within a minute of being wiped.

 

The snow is falling so fast and so thick that it’s difficult to make out the light of the TARDIS where she’s parked just a few dozen metres away, but the Doctor grabs her hand and she takes his gladly, tucking her face into his arm to shield it for a moment.

 

When they step back through the doors there’s a moment of bliss before the temperature variance suddenly makes her stifling hot inside her snow gear and she has to rush to strip it all off before she faints; the Doctor, she notes, is removing his thick jacket at a much more leisurely pace, watching her gleefully.

 

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

 

“Of course. I’m only human.”

 

River scoffs. “You’re not remotely human.”

 

“I can pass as human!”

 

“Yes, for about five minutes.”

 

“Well, if that’s all the time I’ve got…”

 

She lets him have more than five minutes – it takes that long for her to start to feel warm again.

 

* * *

“They are absolutely identical,” River says later, shaking her head as she sits up in bed to look at her scanner.

 

Frowning, the Doctor looks over her shoulder. “No they’re not.”

 

“Fine – but five thousand years ago they were. If you account for wear and tear over the millennia… they’re impossibly identical.”

 

“That’s impossible.”

 

“That’s what I just said.” She elbows him in the ribs.

 

“So what now, Professor Song? What archaeological tricks have you got up your sleeve?” He pauses. “Not that you’re wearing sleeves at present.”

 

“Who was here five thousand years ago? And why the hell would they build _anything_ at the poles? They would have been covered in just as much ice then.” She bites her lip, looking at the image the scanner has constructed of the village. “The architecture is familiar, but I can’t quite place it…”

 

The Doctor shifts closer to her, frowning at the screen. “I can.”

 

“Oh?”

 

He points, enlarging one of the buildings and tracing an outline over its silhouette. “Imagine someone selling chips.”

 

River gasps – he’s right. “Calderon Beta.”

 

“Precisely.”

 

“Darling, do you fancy a trip?”

 

* * *

 

They land nearly a century after their usual night – the TARDIS refuses to put them down any earlier, and River secretly wonders just how many melancholy Doctors are lurking in this planet’s recent past.

 

He certainly looks sombre as they step out into the sunshine, the vague smell of chips hitting them at the same time as the emptiness of the streets. There’s hardly anyone around, which is unsettling; this town is normally quite the tourist trap.

 

“Excuse me.” River grabs a random passer-by – one of the only passers-by. “Where is everyone?”

 

“Oh, they’re all at the Olympics in the capital.” He shrugs. “They’ve declared a state holiday, almost everything is shut. Not the best time to be visiting us here.”

 

“Ooh, Olympics?” says the Doctor, instantly intrigued.

 

River sighs, nudging him. “Sweetie, don’t get distracted.”

 

“Sorry, dear.”

 

They thank the gentleman and wander down the street, paying more attention to the buildings and their façades than on any previous visit. River pulls her scanner out again and runs some comparisons with the ruins on Darillium; the similarities really are striking.

 

“This is impossible,” she mutters.

 

“’Course it’s not,” says the Doctor.

 

“Well can you explain it?”

 

“Not yet.”

 

“Let me know when you can,” River says, doubting that will be any time soon.

 

The Doctor stops in his tracks, looking off to the side.

 

“Sweetie, what…?” She follows his gaze. “Oh.”

 

Not far from where they are standing is the bottom of a shallow set of stairs. The staircase meanders upwards along an unimpressive incline until it meets a wooden walkway, newer in some places than others, which makes sense as River does seem to recall an accidental fire one time; the long walkway juts out into the sea for a precariously long distance until it reaches a little island consisting mostly of a small cliff. Where the wood meets the rock another staircase takes over, this one narrower and steeper and carved right into the cliff and then, farther up, into the side of an enormous tree that grows out over the ocean.

 

Her husband takes her hand. “Come on.”

 

It’s bizarre, walking out there in the daytime. Everything is familiar and yet different, not least the tree itself, which has grown amply in the last hundred years. The Doctor’s fingers tighten around hers and she remembers that for him this is a sacred place, more so even than for her. This is probably his first time setting foot in the planet’s future rather than its past, and she’s sure he can’t help but remember all the times he’s been here before, with and without her.

 

She wonders before she can stop herself if this will be their last visit in the timeline of this place. She definitely hopes they can make it a good one.

 

Halfway across the walkway the Doctor stops and looks out at the sea.

 

River stops too, and leans on the railing at his side.

 

The sea is calm; endless and empty. The Calderonians don’t go in for boats much in any case, so it’s no surprise that the town’s emptiness extends past its shores. The two of them are utterly alone out here.

 

“What are you thinking, Doctor?” she asks softly.

 

He shakes his head, clearing his throat and not meeting her eyes. “Nothing.”

 

That makes her chuckle, and she reaches out to squeeze his hand. “That’s probably the worst lie I’ve ever heard you tell.”

 

The Doctor exhales forcefully, and his lips twitch into a smile. “Quite possibly.”

 

River nods, and she steps closer to lean her head on his shoulder. “Lie to me some more.”

 

He hesitates, but after a moment she hears him say in a near-whisper, “I am perfectly happy. I feel I’m doing everything I can to make the most of these twenty-four years. And there is no part of me counting down in my head and growing ever more terrified of the moment when I’m going to reach zero.”

 

River nods again, swallowing hard. “Me too.”

 

They stand like that for a while, neither of them speaking again, until River finally steps back and tugs on his hand.

 

The desertedness of the place is still eerie, but she can’t help but think that the TARDIS has landed them here on this particular day on purpose. This is their place, and perhaps their last visit. Today, everything here is just for them.

 

At last they reach the tree. Rather than climbing up the carved staircase River steps out onto the platform that extends over the tree’s base. The Doctor looks quizzical for a moment before she grabs the railing a few metres along and vaults over the side. She lands on her feet on one of the giant roots below, and looks up to see the Doctor peering over the edge, comprehension dawning on his grinning face, and River grins as well to see him cheering up a bit.

 

“Is it there?” he calls down.

 

“Come and see for yourself!” she replies.

 

Without further ado the Doctor climbs over the railing and jumps, landing next to her with nary a wobble.

 

“Ha!” he says triumphantly.

 

“Not bad,” River has to concede, reaching for his hand.

 

They duck together under the branches that sweep down from above and clamber over the outer roots until they meet the trunk. The smaller roots plunge down towards the ground at a sharp angle here, leaving plenty of nooks and crannies between the larger ones. River leaps across one of them and onto the next, where she lowers herself carefully into the gap between it and the adjacent one.

 

“It’s still here,” she confirms breathlessly, as the Doctor drops down beside her.

 

Close to the ground, though not as close as it was a hundred years ago, a quite small and unobtrusive carving of the Gallifreyan symbol for eternity is smooth as she runs her fingers over it, a century of high tides having weaved its magic on its once-rough edges.

 

“How old were we when we did this?” River wonders quietly. She could look it up in her diary of course, but that’s not really the point of the question.

 

“Not very,” says the Doctor, crouching down next to her to probe the symbol with one finger. “Youthful whimsey.”

 

“I like it,” River says, unabashed. She looks over at him. “Why are you frowning?”

 

The frown deepens, his eyebrows furrowing almost diabolically as he slowly stands upright again, gaze fixed on the carving. “That shape…”

 

River pulls her hand back and stares at the symbol. “You’re right… I’ve seen it somewhere _recently_.”

 

Suspicion dawns, and she fumbles at her belt for her scanner.

 

The Doctor has reached the same conclusion, she can tell, because he almost knocks her over trying to look over her shoulder.

 

River brings up the images of the polar ruins. The northern ones are less worn down so she chooses a view of those and rotates it until she’s looking at them from directly above.

 

“What the hell is going on here?” she whispers.

 

The layout of the ruined city is such that it exactly matches the symbol in the wood in front of her.

 

The Doctor shakes his head, taking the scanner from her unresisting hands and leaning in to squint closely at the carving on the tree. “At a guess,” he says after a moment, “something weird.”

 

River rolls her eyes, resting a hand on her hip; she had thought for a moment that he might have a real answer. “You don’t say.”

 

* * *

 

River wakes alone again the next morning – and she will kill the Doctor if he points out one more time that ‘morning’ is technically the wrong word – and she stretches, inhaling deeply for a hint of what might be for breakfast.

 

…Nothing.

 

Probably a breakfast that doesn’t involve cooking, then.

 

River sighs and rolls over, waiting for whatever food it might be to make an appearance. There are half a dozen books strewn across the Doctor’s side of the bed, so she picks one up idly to look at the cover; more Darillian archaeology.

 

River frowns. She loves a good mystery as much as the Doctor does and she’s glad they’ve broken out of their monotonous bubble of domestic bliss, but this is not what their stay here is meant to be about.

 

And there’s no noise coming from the kitchen.

 

Frown deepening, River stands.

 

There are no lights on in the house and she pads along the hall to the kitchen in the dark, feeling for the handle and gripping it tightly as she pushes the door open and turns on the light.

 

The kitchen is spotless, and empty.

 

River sighs.

 

She wanders over to the window to confirm her suspicions and grits her teeth when she sees that, as expected, the TARDIS is not parked in her usual place on the lawn.

 

This is just typical.

 

River huffs, grabs a piece of fruit from the counter, and turns on her heel to go and find her vortex manipulator.

 

* * *

 

She doesn’t even really think about where she wants to go until she’s already there – and then she wonders why she’s come here, of all places.

 

But her grandfather has spotted her already.

 

“River!” he greets her from across the golf course, waving enthusiastically.

 

“Hello, Grandfather,” she calls back, setting off towards him.

 

The weather is atrocious and there’s no one there actually playing golf; just a few solitary figures like Brian Williams, walking the dog.

 

“What brings you to sunny England?” he says jovially, when she’s reached him and kissed him on the cheek.

 

“Oh, I just felt like paying you a visit.” River smiles, taking his arm as she matches her pace with his. Her grandfather is always so reassuringly _solid_. It’s nice to have a straightforward man in her life sometimes.

 

“Any news?”

 

“Oh, same old, same old. What about you?”

 

“It’s Custard’s birthday tomorrow.” He grins, producing a tennis ball from his pocket and throwing it up in a long arc through the air, the dog bounding after it over the wet grass.

 

“I still can’t believe you called him Custard.”

 

“Perfectly good name for a dog!”

 

“Better then Fish Fingers,” River concedes.

 

“What’s he done now, then?”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“You only come here when the Doctor’s done something stupid. What is it this time?” Brian prods.

 

River sighs, bunching her hands into fists in her pockets. “He’s just being an idiot, as usual.”

 

Brian nods, accepting this matter-of-factly.

 

“I just… I don’t even know what I want from him.”

 

“Well, that can’t help.”

 

“No.” River shakes her head, and flexes her fingers without removing them from her pockets. “I just… I wish he would _tell_ me things rather than going off on his own. He always leaves the explanation until he gets back. And it’s normally a perfectly good, fascinating, _distracting_ explanation, and I don’t remember that he’s annoyed me so much until the next time he does it.”

 

“You should write it down. You’ve got your big blue book – leave yourself a note.”

 

River nods, and she doesn’t tell him how little she’s been writing, now that she can count the number of empty pages on one hand.

 

 

* * *

 

When she gets back to Darillium the house is full of books. Eventually, in the middle of a huge and messy pile of them in the living room, she finds the Doctor.

 

The Doctor and a small furry creature that looks and smells like an old foot.

 

“River!” He looks up at her, patting the creature on the head. “Where have you been?”

 

“Where have I been?” she demands. “What about you? And what have you done to our _house?_ ”

 

Her husband beams, oblivious as usual to just how infuriated she is with him. “This planet,” he says, stepping forward and holding a finger up in front of her face, “is incredible.”

 

“Yes dear,” River says. “How is this relevant?”

 

“No, I mean it’s literally – it’s _not credible_.”

 

River crosses her arms.

 

“How old do you think this planet is?” the Doctor says.

 

“I don’t know!” River exclaims, exasperated. She can only presume that he _is_ going to answer her question at some point, but as usual he’s got to take the long way round. “Five billion years?” she hazards.

 

“Nope!” He bops her on the nose, delighted, and doesn’t seem to notice when she glares daggers at him. “Try five thousand.”

 

River closes her eyes, and allows her exasperation to take a back seat for a moment; clearly he’s in too deep now for her to just scold him out of it. “That’s impossible.”

 

“And yet here we are.”

 

“The native flora and fauna alone would have taken millions of years to evolve…”

 

“Well if they _were_ native, yes, sure, _but_ …”

 

He turns back to the foot creature, which has started to nibble one of the books. “Sammy here, who claims to be a Darillian yarmont, has just accompanied me to Verondon III two million years in the future, where we compared his DNA to that of his not-so-distant cousins, the Verondonian mihilchuks, and found them to be practically identical.”

 

“What?” River’s forgotten that she was annoyed with him at all, she discovers, and is momentarily annoyed with herself instead. The Doctor in the grip of an enigma is just too bloody _sexy_.

 

“Look at this book,” he commands, tearing it away from Sammy the yarmont’s greedy jaws and pushing it instead into her hands. _Zoological Encyclopaedia of Darillium,_ she just has time to read before he plonks a second one on top, _Plants & Animals of Verondon __III_ , “…And then at that one.” Graciously, the Doctor clears her a space on the sofa.

 

River does as she’s told.

 

Leafing through one book and then the other, it’s soon clear what the Doctor is getting at.

 

“You’re saying,” River says slowly, “that someone went to Verondon III two million years in the future, kidnapped a bunch of animals, and set them loose here on Darillium?”

 

“A few hundred years before the first humans arrived, yes.”

 

“But why?”

 

“Who knows? Why build identical cities at the poles, in the shape of the Gallifreyan symbol for infinity?”

 

“This is beginning to get creepy,” River says. “Is it specifically for us? Who would do that? How could they even know that we would crash land here?”

 

“Well.” The Doctor shrugs. “You said it yourself. There are stories about us everywhere, if you know where to look.”

 

“Is it safe for us here?” River wonders.

 

“I don’t know.” His eyes gleam. “But it sure is fun.”

 

* * *

 

She gets pulled in. She can’t help it. Because the Doctor is right – it _is_ fun to have this mystery to solve, to have something to _do_. She and he are always best together when they’ve got a mission.

 

Part of the reason she lets herself get pulled in so far and so fast is so she doesn’t have time to ponder this too much. She’s worried that it might worry her, if she did.

 

So she doesn’t, for as long as she can help it.

 

“This is useless,” she says suddenly, pulling her thoughts away deliberately from the uncertain terrain they’ve drifted onto.

 

The Doctor looks up. “Be more specific, dear.”

 

“Looking for any clues in Darillian literature.” She gestures in frustration at their collection of books, which by now takes up more floor space than the furniture. “Whatever happened here happened before anyone was here to _write_ literature. That’s where we need to look.”

 

The Doctor winces.

 

River narrows her eyes. “What?”

 

“We can’t,” he says, returning his gaze to the tome in his lap and licking a finger delicately as he turns the page.

 

“What do you mean?” she demands, as patiently as she can.

 

He clears his throat. “The TARDIS won’t let us.”

 

“You’ve tried already, then,” she states.

 

“Well…” He shrugs.

 

“And didn’t deem it necessary to tell me about it.”

 

“Well no, it didn’t work anyway.”

 

“That is not that point, sweetie.”

 

The Doctor has the good grace to cringe, but not to do anything as sensible as, for instance, _apologise_.

 

River sighs, and stands.

 

“River…”

 

“I need some fresh air,” she tells him. “Alone.”

 

She’s upset him now, she can tell, but he’s upset her as well so she can’t quite muster the will to feel bad about it. Maybe later.

 

River steps out into the warm summer night and closes the door behind her, leaning against it for a minute and looking up at the stars.

 

She’s not even sure why she’s upset. It’s not like the Doctor has done anything that she hasn’t done herself.

 

The TARDIS sits in her spot across the lawn, glowing softly in the moonlight.

 

The difference is, River decides, that whatever she’s experienced on her little excursions doesn’t really have anything to do with him – not _this_ him, at least. Whereas his was directly pertinent to what they’re working on together, but he didn’t feel the need to share with her. Which kind of hinders the _together_ aspect.

 

There aren’t that many reasons why the TARDIS would refuse to land somewhere.

 

She finds herself padding across the grass before she’s even consciously made the decision, but by the time she reaches the control room River is clear in her head about what she’s doing and why. If the Doctor won’t share information with her she’ll just have to go back and find it herself, won’t she?

 

The coordinates are still set from the Doctor’s attempt, and she braces herself for whatever kind of protest might come.

 

But there is none.

 

Without further ado the TARDIS materialises five thousand years in the past, on what by all accounts would have to be a brand new Darillium. Frowning, River heads for the door.

 

It looks very much like the Darillium of today, just more empty. No house and little garden, not even grass underfoot, just a wide expanse of the same of sand she’s seen every day since they arrived here.

 

She follows the unbroken stretch of it with her eyes, from the tips of her toes to the horizon – where she stops.

 

“Huh.”

 

“Yep,” says the Doctor’s voice beside her. “Weird, isn’t it?”

 

River rolls her eyes… but he can’t have followed her, she’s got the TARDIS. Which means…

 

“I should have known.” She shakes her head.

 

“That that was why younger me couldn’t land here? Yup.”

 

“Why are you so infuriating, Doctor?”

 

“That’s why you love me, isn’t it?”

 

“I don’t think so,” she says, unimpressed.

 

He shrugs this off easily, and nods at the spot in the distance that she still hasn’t taken her eyes off. “What do you think?”

 

“How can there be only one Tower?” she demands. “They’re practically identical. This should be impossible.”

 

“There’s a lot of impossible going around on this planet,” the Doctor remarks.

 

“So I’ve noticed.”

 

“Let’s take a closer look.”

 

“I thought you’d never ask.”

 

* * *

 

She wasn’t expecting to get _this_ close.

 

The Doctor has parked the TARDIS _inside_ the Tower.

 

River looks out of the open doors at the sparking crystals gleaming at her from every square inch of surface in front of her. The Doctor presses a torch into her hand and shines his own down into the glittering darkness beneath them.

 

“This is beautiful,” River breathes.

 

“Shame it’s all hidden from view to the casual observer, isn’t it?” the Doctor agrees. “Then again, if anyone knew this was here the Towers would probably have been eviscerated before that restaurant even had a chance to be built.”

 

“Our little secret,” she agrees, grinning.

 

“How many little secrets do we have now?” the Doctor mumbles into her ear, strapping her into her safety harness, his hands lingering perhaps longer than strictly necessary.

 

River leans into his touch. “Oh, I’ve lost count.”

 

“As many as stars in the sky.” His grin matches hers as he secures his own harness. “Ready, dear?”

 

“Always.”

 

They abseil down the crystal covered wall, stopping now and then to admire the crystals.

 

“TARDIS blue,” River remarks, running a finger over the smooth edges of one particularly large outcropping.

 

“Of course,” says the Doctor.

 

River frowns, though she’s not sure how much of her expression he’ll be able to make out in the torchlight. “Why of course?”

 

“Well, what other colour would they be?”

 

He launches himself away from the wall and further down, and River’s frown deepens. “Are you avoiding the question?”

 

His upturned face, when his torch briefly illuminates it, is split by a shadowy grin. “Spoilers.”

 

“I’ll take that as a yes,” she says wryly.

 

“Come and look at this,” he says suddenly.

 

The Doctor lowers himself the last few feet to the bottom of the huge cave and River follows suit, intrigued. Standing up on the crystals is difficult and she’s glad she’s being held upright by the rope; the Doctor doesn’t seem to care, and kneels down without hesitation to look at a small speck on the ground which glitters slightly differently from the rest of the cave.

 

“What is that?” River asks, pulling her screwdriver out as he prods it with his.

 

He looks up, and his gaze lingers on the screwdriver in her hand before he looks up at her face. “It’s a miniature scanner. Like they use in a transporter to scan your body.”

 

“What the...?” River breathes. “Is that why there are two, later? The second one is a copy of the first?”

 

The Doctor looks back down at the speck on the ground. “Must have been practising.”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

He meets her eyes again, and the grin is back. “I think – I hope – I mean _spoilers_.”

 

But something in his eyes hurts.

 

 

* * *

 

When River gets back to what she currently thinks of as _the present_ the Doctor is cooking.

 

She smiles, closing the TARDIS door and watching him through the kitchen window. It’s often wise to skip to an hour after a fight.

 

Whatever it is smells _good_ , and she walks back into the house without hesitation, eager to make up. Spending time with the older him has reminded her how much they need to make the most of their time here – he may still be tinkering around here in years to come, or millenia past to be more accurate, but he is living in a time when they’re apart again, which means that wherever her future self is, she’s not with him. No magical fix yet. She tries to hold out hope that it will temporary.

 

But if not, she needs to try and stop being offended at the Doctor being himself. If she hasn’t been able to change him in nearly two hundred years of marriage it’s not likely she’ll be able to do it in the last twenty-three.

 

Then she has to pause for a moment to suppress a shudder at the thought of their marriage having an _end_. It’s not something she’s cared to contemplate much before, but she supposes she may have to get used to it.

 

The Doctor pulls the door open suddenly and she blinks in the bright light from the kitchen.

 

“River, you’re back!”

 

Face lit up, he ushers her into the kitchen and, when she doesn’t protest, backs her against the nearest empty counter and lifts her up to sit on it. Then he rests his hands on her hips and gazes up at her fondly until a small fire starts on the stove.

 

“Oh,” he exclaims, rushing to put it out, and River giggles.

 

“What’s all this in aid of, sweetie?”

 

“Apology,” he says, faffing around with a damp towel and contorting his body in ways she finds quite _fascinating_.

 

“Apology accepted,” she decides.

 

“You haven’t even tasted it yet.”

 

“Then it better be good,” she teases, watching him.

 

She _likes_ this. It surprises her in a way because she’s never really thought of herself as being one for domesticity. They’ve been doing alright here so far, but she’s never been so glad to just get back to _normal_ before. ‘Normal’ is something she’s generally equated with ‘boring’.

 

Perhaps she’s finally growing up a bit.

 

“It will be spectacular,” the Doctor promises.

 

“Spectacularly burnt?” River teases, swinging her legs.

 

“Only because you’re spectacularly sexy,” he counters. It looks like he’s managed to kill all the flames now, at least.

 

“You’d better be carefully or you’re going to find yourself spectacularly shagged right here.”

 

“We might burn the house down if I don’t finish dinner first.”

 

“That _would_ be spectacular.” She smirks, but desists. He’s trying so hard, bless him, and whatever he’s cooking did smell good before the fire.

 

Now it mostly smells burnt, but she trusts that can be remedied.

 

“We may need to eat outside,” the Doctor cautions. “I think it’ll take a good airing to get the smell out.”

 

She does appreciate it when he reads her mind.

 

* * *

 

They end up lying on the lawn an hour or so later, bellies full and hands intertwined, looking up at the stars.

 

“What constellations do they have on Darillium?” River says contemplatively. “I keep meaning to find out.”

 

“I don’t know.” The Doctor points. “But that one looks like a Slitheen.”

 

“It does not.”

 

“Suit yourself,” he says easily.

 

She can see what she means, she decides – but she hates the Slitheen and doesn’t want them intruding. Not here.

 

“Where did you go?” he asks, after a comfortable silence has stretched to its natural end.

 

River smirks. “Nowhere.”

 

The Doctor rolls his eyes, and tries again. “ _When_ did you go?”

 

“About five thousand years ago.” She turns her head to meet his eyes, and catches them widening before realisation dawns and an eyebrow arches speculatively.

 

“I was already there.”

 

“Spoilers.” River shrugs, and hides a smile.

 

A grin spreads over his face. “Ha.”

 

* * *

 

He takes her back to the restaurant every year for the anniversary of their arrival on Darillium.

 

The Towers are particularly beautiful tonight even in the dark, lit by the full moons, though there’s no song to be heard. River rests her chin on her hand and gazes out at them serenely.

 

“Your usual, Doctor?” says the waitress, appearing silently at his side.

 

“Sorry? …Yes, thank you.” He clears his throat, clearly embarrassed to be caught looking at his wife the way he has. River wonders if he knows she’s been watching him out of the corner of her eye, and smirks.

 

“And you, Professor Song?”

 

She’s a bit more adventurous than him. “Has the menu changed since last year?” she asks.

 

“No, Professor.”

 

“Then I’ll have whatever’s listed fifth – is it the Venusian pumpkin?”

 

“It is, Professor.”

 

“Excellent. I’ve been looking forward to that.”

 

The Doctor waits until the waitress has gone, and then remarks, “There are only sixteen items on the menu. What are you going to do when you’ve tried them all?”

 

“Oh, I’ll probably suddenly develop some dietary restrictions which will make them all impossible for me to eat, and see what they come up with.”

 

“You are incorrigible, d’you know that?”

 

“It’s one of the things you love about me,” River says, grinning.

 

“Unfortunately true. But we could always go to another restaurant.”

 

“What, and cancel a decade’s worth of reservations?”

 

“If you like.”

 

“No.” She shakes her head. “I like it here.”

 

The Doctor looks at her, an indecipherable expression on his face.

 

River looks back, raising her eyebrows. “What?”

 

“Nothing. I’ve just never known you not to want to try something new.”

 

She finds her eyebrows rising further of their own accord. “I must be getting old,” she remarks. Suddenly she feels off-kilter.

 

“Never.” The Doctor smiles fondly.

 

“That’s easy for you to say. You’ve reached old and come out the other side.”

 

Any response to this is curtailed by the arrival of the waitress with their wine. River accepts her glass gratefully; when she glances at the Doctor he’s still looking at her with that absurdly affectionate expression on his face.

 

She kind of likes it.

 

He raises his glass. “To growing old together,” he declares softly.

 

River smiles, and clinks her glass against his.

 

* * *

 

Breakfast grows ever more lavish.

 

River wakes one night only an hour after she fell asleep to find the Doctor gone, and the muffled sound of cursing coming from the kitchen. Rolling her eyes in fond disbelief, she climbs out of bed, pulls on a dressing gown and tiptoes through the house to find him.

 

He doesn’t notice her leaning in the doorway at first, busy as he is insulting the ancestry of a mess of raw pastry that’s been dropped on the floor. It’s only when he goes to pick it up that she catches his eye, and he straightens quickly, dropping the pastry again on his slippers.

 

“Some of us are trying to sleep you know, sweetie,” River remarks, smirking.

 

“Sorry,” the Doctor says. “I was just…” He gestures at the pastry, shrugging.

 

“Come back to bed,” River suggests.

 

He looks sceptical. “The recipe says—“

 

“Come back to bed,” River repeats, casually untying her dressing gown.

 

The Doctor swallows. “Yes dear.”

 

Breakfast the next morning is still perfect, if a tad more simple than planned.

 

* * *

 

Sometimes he’ll take her away somewhere, just to shake things up and to see the sun. A sun, anyway – neither of them much care which one it is.

 

On New Earth they visit New Honolulu, and River alternates between soaking up the sun with the Doctor, who sits by the beach with a book in his lap, and visiting museums and landmarks.

 

On Sarmacus IV they go windsurfing, which inevitably results in them both showing off, having a race, and crashing spectacularly.

 

On 126th-century Mars they go hiking in the mountains for the best views of the terraformed planet, and they swim in a lake inaccessible to anyone without a TARDIS.

 

River writes everything down in her diary in tiny shorthand, and tries to enjoy it while it lasts.

 

* * *

 

It’s only when she’s sneaking out to the TARDIS while he’s preoccupied with yet another million-page book that she realises how long it’s been since she last did this.

 

Years, in fact.

 

But when the TARDIS rematerialises and she steps out of the doors, there he still is.

 

The Doctor, on Darillium.

 

“How many years later is this for you?” she asks, taking in his slightly surprised face and sitting down next to him.

 

They’re right on top of the Tower. Still only one Tower, silent and solitary.

 

No wonder the Doctor is brooding.

 

“How long since I left?” she prods, shuffling closer. She doesn’t ask why she didn’t stay, too. She’ll find out, sooner than she’d like.

 

“Twenty-four years yesterday,” he sighs. “I’ve now officially spent more time here without you than with you.”

 

River takes his hand, and he squeezes back gratefully. “Why are you still here?”

 

He gestures helplessly at the Tower beneath them. “Trying to get this bloody thing to replicate properly. If I can’t even mange a hunk of rock, how am I going to get it to…” He clears his throat. “Anyway, if I can’t do it the Towers will never sing, you’ll never ask me to bring you here – huge paradox.”

 

“Would that be so bad?”

 

The Doctor frowns. “Of course it would. I want to give you… everything.”

 

“We could run away together. Right now. Hop in the TARDIS and off we go.”

 

“Hah. Right. Huger paradox.”

 

“So?”

 

He licks his lips, and a deeper, more painful frown crosses his features before he answers. “If we do that, I might never meet you.” He shakes his head, bending it to kiss the back of her hand. “Not worth it, dear. Nothing would be worth that.”

 

River finds herself smiling at that, and she tugs him to his feet. “Come on, then.”

 

“Come where?”

 

“I’m not leaving until there are two Towers standing here.”

 

He doesn’t say anything, but he follows her into the TARDIS without complaint.

 

* * *

 

It doesn’t take as long as she thinks it will, and secretly she’s a bit disappointed. She’s burrowed an extra couple of weeks out of their time together; it could have been more.

 

But of course however much she gets it will never be enough.

 

Something is on the Doctor’s mind, too, as she leaves him.

 

“Don’t be too hard on me,” he says. “ I’m very worried about something.”

 

River’s not even completely sure which him he’s referring to, but he turns away before she gets a chance to ask. She contemplates going after him… but he’ll probably manage to say just as little with more words, if he deigns to say anything at all.

 

So she leaves, and tries to erase the frown from her face when she steps back into the house.

 

The younger Doctor is oblivious as usual, his nose still buried in the book she left him with.

 

She studies him more closely – is there a hint of worry in the hurried way he turns the pages, or the way he looks poised to jump up from the chair at any moment, just as soon as he’s found the answer he’s looking for?

 

River’s not sure. He’s not as easy to read in this body.

 

But he’s working on the same problem now as he is in his future, essentially. It’s all tied up with the mystery of Darillium. The older Doctor is focussing very intently on the use of the replication technology, the younger is still trying to figure out which things have already been replicated and why.

 

But what has he found that has him so worried?

 

“Everything alright, sweetie?” she ventures.

 

“Fine, dear,” he says, not looking up.

 

River realises that she’s frowning again. “What are you reading?”

 

“Geophysical survey,” the Doctor says shortly. He licks his finger and flicks to the next page.

 

Perching on the arm of the overstuffed chair he’s been spending most of his time in lately, River looks over his shoulder. “Anything interesting?”

 

“Everything.” Finally, he looks up. “This planet’s magnetic poles are at the precise locations of its geographical poles.”

 

“That’s impossible.”

 

“We should really stop using that word.”

 

“Fine – what’s the explanation?”

 

“I don’t know.” The Doctor’s expression shows just how unhappy that’s making him. “It’s almost as if it’s _artificial_ – but that would mean a giant computer inside the planet…” he trails off, suddenly miles away.

 

And River suddenly makes a connection.

 

“That’s because there is,” she says, with absolute certainty.

 

“There is what?”

 

She grabs his hand and pulls him from the chair, and he doesn’t complain about the book falling on his toes so either he’s still in his own little world or something in her eyes makes him follow her unquestioningly, but either way he’s right behind her.

 

“You know something I don’t,” he surmises as they run across the lawn to the TARDIS.

 

“Always.” River grins, and pushes the door open.

 

Moments later they step out into the control room River has become so familiar with in the older Doctor’s company.

 

The younger version gawks.

 

It’s the first time River has had free rein of the controls, and she wastes no time going to the nearest console and poking about.

 

It really is like a command centre for the whole world.

 

There are sensors everywhere, monitoring everything from the weather to the ants in the soil. River has never _seen_ information gathering on this scale – even police states don’t go in for recording the propagation of bacteria in a planet’s lakes, or for stargazing… monitoring the skies yes, but not to track natural phenomena.

 

“Whoever built this must have been the ultimate control freak,” she whispers.

 

The Doctor meanwhile has found a console of his own, and still hasn’t managed to shut his gaping mouth. River strolls over to join him just as a blueprint flashes up on the screen. A blueprint of a sonic screwdriver.

 

 _Whoever built this place_ …

 

“This is it,” the Doctor says, more to himself to her. “This is how we do it – a data transfer between one planetary computer core and another… yes!”

 

“Yes what?” River demands.

 

He turns to face her, practically ecstatic. “Spoilers.”

 

* * *

 

River has her suspicions, of course.

 

She has too many suspicions to count.

 

She can tell that he’s cheating time while she’s asleep. There is no way just cooking breakfast before she gets up could make him this hyper, this scruffy, this _insane_. He’s doing his best to hide it from her and the time they spend together is wonderful, but he’s increasingly distracted.

 

She knows he’ll be staying here after she’s gone. She doesn’t think he’s figured that much out for himself yet. He’s going to have plenty of time to work on whatever bizarre mysteries this planet still holds, but she can’t tell him that.

 

And they no longer have plenty of time left between now and then.

 

_Seven years, three months, two days._

 

Less than a third.

 

River grits her teeth, and tells herself that she is damned well going to milk that time for all it’s worth.

 

* * *

 

She makes him go away with her. He seems to find it impossible to relax on Darillium, to focus his attention purely on the _now_. This is not usual for him and she has to try hard not to let it worry her, concentrating instead on getting him as far away from all that as possible.

 

So they go to all the places they’ve never been before.

 

Okay, perhaps not quite all. He is practically immortal but the universe is still _big_ , which is just as well because sometimes she feels like spending more time off Darillium than on. Because when they’re somewhere else, _anywhere_ else, the countdown freezes and she can breathe freely.

 

She takes him to the great University of Antarctica in the 36th century, surprised that he’s never been. She takes him to the planet of Hilofa to try their famed avocado roast. She takes him to Space Station Forty-Five where they help to solve a murder and accidentally start a craze for naked dining.

 

He on the other hand doesn’t take her anywhere any more unless she takes him somewhere first. It’s like the idea doesn’t enter his head while he’s on Darillium, so caught up is he with his mystery. She still helps him where she can, but…

 

Well. She prefers to get away.

 

They visit the planet Malloria shortly after the start of their nineteenth year, not that River’s counting – oh, who is she kidding. Of course she’s counting. She doesn’t even need to think about it any more, it’s just running in the background until something reminds her and makes her conscious again of just how little time she has left. It’s always little time. It’s been little time right from the start.

 

 River doesn’t tell the Doctor about the planet’s many archaeological curiosities, but she also doesn’t intentionally land them right in the middle of a major dig site.

 

Not that she’s particularly unhappy about it.

 

She laughs at the Doctor’s expression when they step out of the TARDIS into a sea of tents and pith helmets spread over the dirt ground of a long valley, and can’t help the grin that spreads over her face – she instantly feels at home.

 

“What’s the collective noun for archaeologists anyway?” the Doctor mutters, glowering at the people staring at his obviously non-archaeologist clothing. “A murder of archaeologists – like magpies, that seems apt.”

 

“There’ll be no murder of archaeologists today, thank you very much sweetie,” River admonishes, strolling towards what seems to be the hub of the place; a round temple with shining pillars, the skeletons of massive marine reptiles sticking out from them at odd angles.

 

The Doctor brightens up when he sees them. “Looks like something’s been murdered though.”

 

“It’s just a quirk of the fossilisation process,” River tells him, recalling the reason this place is so famous – or will be. “The temple was built on a dried out sea bed, the sea came back, the sea went away again… these creatures just happened to be caught in the ruins when the mud came back.”

 

Still, it’s impressive.

 

And the people working on it don’t seem to be taking very much care with it.

 

River watches in horror as one team working with huge chisels cut one of the skeletons from the pillar it was embedded in, letting it fall to the ground and then ignoring it completely as they examine the cavity it’s left behind in the structure. Without thinking, she rushes to kneel down by the fossil, several parts of which have chipped off and flown across the ground in the fall.

 

“What did you do that for?” she demands. “This is a priceless artefact!”

 

The woman closest to her looks at her in surprise. “It’s just a copy, ma’am. The palaeontologists have their own.” She points across the valley to where, River sees now, an identical temple with identical fossils is being crawled over by another team of workers.

 

“So where’s the original?” the Doctor asks, frowning.

 

“Still half buried at the other end of the valley, until we figure out how best to remove it. We don’t want to use the transporter to dematerialise it, it would cause too much damage to the surrounding area.”

 

“Transporter…” His frown deepens, but River notices that woman is beginning to mirror his expression.

 

“I’m sorry, who are you?” She turns to scrutinise River more closely.

 

“Professor River Song, University of Oxford,” she introduces herself. Not strictly true, but when you’re not completely sure which time period you’re in Oxford is generally a safe bet. “Just here to observe.” She flashes the woman a blinding smile before quickly steering the Doctor and his frown away and out of earshot.

 

“Something’s wrong,” she says quietly. She’s not sure what it is yet, but—

 

But the Doctor isn’t paying any attention at all. “Genius!” he’s saying. “Haha, yes!”

 

River crosses her arms and waits patiently.

 

“Using a transporter to _duplicate_ the temple – of course! It scans the original, then rather than disassembling it – ha!”

 

“Sweetie.” She’s having an epiphany of her own.

 

He turns with a grin. “Yes dear?”

 

“Did you see what those pillars were made of?”

 

“Reinforced quartzite, why?” She’s about to reply when he answers his own question. “How could reinforced quartzite be weakened so much that the fossils could be absorbed into the structure?”

 

“Exactly. The timescales don’t make any sense.”

 

“And all these archaeologists haven’t figured that out?”

 

“Give them a break,” River rolls her eyes. “Humankind hasn’t invented that kind of mineral reinforcement yet.”

 

“No excuse.”

 

She decides to ignore him. “So what’s really going on here?” she says, setting off for the far end of the valley.

 

He follows her without question, and she grins. “Probably a hoax,” he says.

 

“Might be. Then again, it might not.”

 

“Some weird chemical reaction with whatever was in the water.”

 

“Maybe.”

 

“Really strong fish.”

 

“Now you’re reaching.”

 

He grins, and she suddenly remembers that she loves him so much it hurts, and she hates it.

 

But she doesn’t want to say anything, so she just takes his hand.

 

The other end of the valley is half an hour’s walk away, but River borrows a pith helmet from a hapless bystander – she’ll ask permission later, not her fault if he leaves it outside the tent while he naps – and people stop staring at them quite so much. She tries to get the Doctor to wear one too but of course he refuses.

 

Too bad. His last body would have jumped at the chance to try a new hat.

 

Thankfully they reach their destination before she can dwell on this too much.

 

Activity around the original fossil-covered temple is very subdued compared to what people are doing to the copies. No one is actually standing close to it, though quite a few frowning people are looking at it from behind various pieces of equipment nearby.

 

“How’s it going?” the Doctor asks the nearest one.

 

The guy shakes his head, without looking up. “Not good. Everything’s just too weird for us to even know what we _could_ do about it, never mind what we _should_ …” He crosses his arms, leaning back behind his portable console with a sigh.

 

“Weird how?” River demands.

 

“Take a look for yourself.” He gestures at his readouts. “It’s not just the temple that’s got weird things mixed in with it. Scans of the surrounding area show – well. It’s like two completely different environments have just melted together. The soil, the bedrock, nothing goes together like it should.”

 

“Interesting,” the Doctor says, and wanders off towards the temple before River can even wonder whether to stop him.

 

So she follows him instead.

 

He stops in front of a submerged pillar, with some skeleton’s tail just poking up above the sand, and scowls, squatting to grab a handful of sand and let it trickle back through his fingers.

 

“I never thought I’d see the day,” River remarks. “You, me, an archaeological mystery, a noticeable lack of scorn on your part.”

 

“Something’s wrong here,” he mutters.

 

“Yes. I believe I said that already.”

 

“Then what is it?” The Doctor stands abruptly, whirling to look back at the end of the valley. He pulls his screwdriver from his pocket and points it at the ruins without even looking at them, scowling.

 

And suddenly they’re in the sea.

 

River gets a mouthful of water and then a surge of adrenaline as she realises she’s underwater and fights her way towards the surface. There are fish and other creatures swimming around her and she’s lost the pith hat, and it’s many long metres of hard slog straight up, and the taste of salt is disgusting but she can’t spit, not until she—

 

—reaches the surface. She coughs and splutters and spits repeatedly in the cold air, and her heart stops for a long moment before she sees the Doctor’s head rise up a few metres away.

 

“Are you alright?” he gasps, swimming towards her.

 

River nods. “Yes,” she manages, despite the fact that she’s shaking all over as she desperately treads water. “Where are we?”

 

The Doctor looks around, and her stomach drops when he dives back under the water again for a long moment before reappearing again looking pale. “Same place we were before,” he says.

 

A look around at the hills and mountains that surround them tell her that he’s right. “How? What the hell’s going on? Nothing could have brought so much water here so quickly without so much as a splash!”

 

“Maybe the water was already here.”

 

“Explain, sweetie.”

 

“We’re in the same place. We’re just sharing this space with another version of this space.”

 

“You mean we’re in another dimension?”

 

“More like the dimensions are overlapping.”

 

River stops – then remembers that she can’t stop or she’ll sink. “Well. That explains a few things.” Sinking is slowly becoming a concern, actually – she’s not dressed for swimming. “Did you trigger this?”

 

“Maybe,” he admits, bringing up his screwdriver and shaking water out of it. “Probably the quartzite combined with the frequency of the scan. It’s a similar principle to the one that powers the dimension-hoppers built by—“

 

“Can you undo it?” River asks, pulling him back on track.

 

“Not yet. We would need to let the charge rebuild.”

 

“Doctor, people will drown.”

 

He stops. “Anything we do will be too late.”

 

“We’ve got a time machine,” she says fiercely.

 

The Doctor looks at her.

 

It’s one of those looks that she loves. The one that says he’s got some crazy scheme that will somehow make the impossible possible.

 

“We need to find the TARDIS.”

 

“Did you set the HADS?” River asks, scanning the closest hills for any hint of blue.

 

“Yes, but I’m not sure a transdimensional flood would—“

 

“She’s smarter than you give her credit for,” River interrupts, nodding at the shore behind him.

 

He turns to see the TARDIS and grins in relief. “Let’s go then.”

 

The swim is long and arduous and River is thoroughly fed up before they’re even half-way there. Still, eventually they reach land and heave themselves onto the dusty hillside, lying side by side and wheezing with exhaustion.

 

They look at each other for a good long while before they look anywhere else. This has become a habit now, more and more so as their night on Darillium passes; they check up on each other, they take inventories of each other’s mental and physical dispositions and communicate silently until they’re each satisfied that the other is alright. River hasn’t voiced it to the Doctor, but there is a fear that hovers in her chest that the reason this is their last night is that something is going to happen to one of them – something terrible and irrevocable.

 

What other reason could they have for parting?

 

For now, however, she’s satisfied that he’s okay, and she turns her gaze to the body of water behind them. The surface is still, the only movement the fading ripples fanning out from where they crawled onto the shore.

 

There’s no one else.

 

“We have to save them,” she points out softly, quietly daring him to disagree. “History doesn’t say anything about a mass extinction of archaeologists here.”

 

“More’s the pity.”

 

“Stop it.”

 

He shuts up, and they both stare out at the lake for a while longer before he gets to his feet, offering her his hand.

 

River stands and stays there facing him for a moment, squeezing his shoulders and letting the water seep from the fabric and through her fingers.

 

His hands snake around her waist and she leans in to kiss him, pressing her cold lips against his until both of them have regained a little warmth. His face is flushed when she pulls away to look at him, his eyes suddenly dark, and he pulls her closer to him.

 

“What about the archaeologists?” she asks breathlessly, not resisting as he starts to unbutton her shirt and lowers his head to kiss her neck.

 

“Might be good for them to be buried for a while,” he says briskly, releasing the last button with a flourish. “Give them more insight into their work.”

 

“I hate you,” she mutters, gasping involuntarily as he returns his attention to her neck with increased vigour.

 

“No you don’t,” he comes up to whisper in her ear, his hot breath on her cool skin making her shiver.

 

River pulls his face to hers for another kiss, surrendering all other thoughts in favour of the here and now. It’s something she’s become an expert in by now, because if she thinks too much about the bigger picture she ends up crying and the Doctor ends up flapping about helplessly and everything ends up terrible.

 

So she doesn’t ponder how every time is one time closer to the last time, and she doesn’t wonder if this will be a time she’ll remember with a smile or with a sigh, and she doesn’t think about anything at all except the Doctor’s hands on her skin and hers on his.

 

They deepen their kiss hungrily, desperately, as seems to happen to all their kisses lately, and she doesn’t think about that or what it says about them either. She reaches for his jacket instead, pushing her fingers underneath the sodden fabric and letting it fall to the ground behind him. Her hands wander down and under his waistband, dipping into the damp heat there to pull his shirt from his trousers. He catches her wrists before she can pull them completely free and guides them back, cocking a smug eyebrow at her. River scoffs, but she makes quick work of unzipping him and helping him out of his soaked trousers and underpants. The Doctor gasps when the cool air hits his bare skin and River grins, grabbing his buttocks and grinding against him.

 

“You’re not nearly naked enough,” he complains, groaning and pulling her closer. He doesn’t let go even when she does, so unbuttoning her shorts is a chore, but when she slides them down her legs and finds herself immediately skin to skin with him any annoyance is forgotten.

 

He walks her backwards until her legs hit the side of a large, smooth rock, warm where the sun has been shining on it, and she sighs happily as she lies back on it and the warmth spreads across her back. The Doctor above her is heating up too, she notes with a smirk, arching her spine as he takes her wrists again and pins them above her head, pressing the length of his body against hers.

 

River sighs loudly in appreciation and raises her head to kiss him, grinning into his mouth until she feels his lips twist upwards too. The Doctor releases one of her wrists to free his hand for other activities, stroking over her face and down her neck to her chest, where he lingers with a lazy swirling pattern around her nipples until she nips his lip with a growl and he takes the hint, his fingers dancing nimbly across her hips and down between her thighs.

 

He slips a finger inside her and she moans loudly into his mouth, whimpering when he pulls it out slowly and trails the tip of it over her clit before repeating the motion, first more quickly and firmly and then slowing down to an agonising pace, only brushing against her just enough for her to feel it’s that it’s _not_ enough.

 

‘Doctor,” she begs, and he cackles and changes nothing. River narrows her eyes and hooks her legs around his waist, drawing him closer, urging him to take the hint.

 

Seriously. Any time now.

 

Time…

 

Mercifully he distracts her from that troubling thought beginning to form by withdrawing his finger one final time and guiding himself inside her, raising his hand as he does so to cup her cheek. He kisses her tenderly even as he sets a brisk pace and for a few glorious moments her brain is too busy trying to pay attention on every part of her body at once for her to think at all.

 

“I love you,” she whispers, focussing everything she has on that sentiment and the here and now and nothing else.

 

Here and now his fingers dip back between her legs until love is all she feels and she tells him so, over and over, and finally he slows and lies down by her side with a sigh.

 

They look at each other, taking stock – he’s alright. She’s alright.

 

His lips twitch into a smile.

 

And dammit, all the thoughts rush back and the tears start before she can stop them.

 

 

* * *

 

Their twenty-third year on Darillium ends the same as all the others have – with dinner on Christmas Day, overlooking the Towers.

 

Their song tonight is beautiful.

 

River’s mood right now, not so much.

 

“I thought you’d stood me up!” she says, as soon as they’re alone on the balcony.

 

“Sorry,” he says – at least reasonably sincerely, a small mercy. “I was doing a thing.”

 

“A thing more important than our anniversary?”

 

She’s been sitting at this table for the last twenty minutes. When he said he would meet her here rather than walk with her she had stupidly expected him to be _on time_.

 

The Doctor cringes. “Well. Sort of.”

 

River folds her arms. “Explain.”

 

“I had to invent something.”

 

“And you had to do it before dinner.”

 

“Yes!”

 

She stares. He hides behind the menu.

 

River has had plenty of time to peruse the menu. She waits.

 

After about a minute he lowers it to reveal a horrified expression. “They’ve changed it!”

 

“Yes, Doctor.”

 

“They took the Martian rösti off the menu!”

 

“They did.”

 

“But it’s what I always order!”

 

“I suppose you were the only one,” she says, slightly more nastily than she might have twenty minutes ago.

 

“Why couldn’t they have waited another year and a day?”

 

The reminder of how little time they have left hurts more than it should.

 

“I don’t know,” she says stonily. “Why couldn’t you have waited another year and a day to invent your thing?”

 

That gets his attention. Finally. His _I-didn’t-realise-I’d-upset-you-so-much_ expression spreads across his face like a bloodstain.

 

“I’m sorry,” he says.

 

River nods.

 

“I’m rubbish.”

 

She nods again.

 

“It’s just – I was – I mean I _could’ve_ …”

 

He sighs, reaching into his jacket, and pulls out a shoe box.

 

“Happy anniversary.”

 

“Oh…”

 

She hates it when he does this. One moment she’s got a perfectly legitimate reason to be annoyed, and the next…

 

She reaches for the box, and sets it on the table.

 

Inside is a beautiful pair of silver shoes. Almost as beautiful as the music she is only just starting to remember to listen to again. The design is not anything she recognises, but they’re streamlined, elegant, and they sparkle in the moonlight. Lovely.

 

“I hate to tell you this, sweetie,” she says slowly, not willing to let go of all her displeasure in one go, “But shoes have already been invented.”

 

“I didn’t invent _shoes_ ,” the Doctor scoffs. He rolls his eyes – River is sure that’s supposed to be her job. “Tap them together three times.”

 

“’There’s no place like home’?” she quotes at him, taking a shoe in each hand and examining them carefully before doing as he says.

 

Instantly, she’s transported to the TARDIS.

 

Narrowing her eyes, she repeats the motion.

 

And the Doctor is sitting opposite her again, looking at her expectantly.

 

“I have got a vortex manipulator, you know,” River points out, not entirely unkindly.

 

“Yes, yes. I know.” The Doctor swallows. “This is a backup.”

 

“Thank you,” River says, watching him carefully. Something’s not right, but she can’t put her finger on it.

 

The Doctor relaxes, evidently satisfied, and picks the menu back up. “I think I’ll try the chicken.”

 

 

* * *

 

River lies awake.

 

The Doctor, for once, is fast asleep beside her, exhausted from cooking a twelve course meal and then depositing each course carefully at some future point in time. He calls it a culinary treasure hunt. She calls it a bunch of mouldy leftovers waiting to happen, but only because she can’t think of a bigger gesture to top it.

 

It’s raining, huge drops of water splashing onto the skylight and collecting in the little seam at the bottom where the window meets the roof. Normally she likes the sound of the rain but tonight she’s having flashbacks to lying on her bunk in Stormcage, listening to the raging tempest outside and wondering how much longer she has left with her husband. It seems to her in hindsight that she did that quite a lot, and she wishes she hadn’t.

 

Because now she knows – three months, two weeks, two days – and she wonders if she wasn’t happier when she didn’t.

 

“Wassamatta?” the Doctor mumbles suddenly, rolling over. She assumes the arm he lets fall messily onto her chest is not meant to be attacking her.

 

“What?” she says, shaking her head. He’s barely even got his eyes open.

 

“What’s the matter?” he says with more effort this time.

 

“What do you think, sweetie?” River rolls her eyes. It’s better than crying.

 

“Oh.” He squints – an improvement, she supposes. “I was hoping it was something I could fix.”

 

“Don’t tell me you can’t fix it.” She realises she’s still been hoping that he can, after all – what is the older Doctor tinkering with on old Darillium if not a way to _fix_ things?

 

“I already told you that.”

 

He doesn’t sound hopeful.

 

“Let’s go somewhere,” she decides abruptly. Anything else is going to make it worse.

 

“It’s the middle of the night.”

 

River grins. “Only here.”

 

The Doctor tilts his head. “Fair point.”

 

* * *

 

They end up on the side of a third-century Swiss mountain in the middle of a summer afternoon, perched on a rock beside a clear, shallow river. There’s not a soul in sight.

 

The Doctor has produced ice cream cones from some hidden nook in the TARDIS, and River licks the melted drips off her wrist before the wasps can get them.

 

It’s so different from Darillium.

 

“Why haven’t we done this more often?” she wonders, dangling her feet over the edge of the rock and dipping her bare toes in the water.

 

“What? We had ice cream yesterday.”

 

River rolls her eyes. “You know that’s not what I mean.”

 

The Doctor focuses more intently on his ice cream cone. “We’ve been busy.”

 

“You’ve been busy,” River corrects gently.

 

He shrugs, reluctantly conceding the point.

 

“What’s so important about Darillium, Doctor?”

 

He takes a good bite of ice cream, swallows and licks his lips before he answers. “It may be the most important thing I’ve ever done.”

 

The surprises her; then it makes her angry. “More important than our last night together?”

 

“That’s not what I said.”

 

“That’s what it sounded like, sweetie.”

 

“It’s…” He sighs. “It’s complicated.”

 

“Doctor.” River waits patiently; eventually he turns to meet her eyes. “Please. We haven’t got much time left. After I’m gone, you’ll have as long as you need to do whatever you want – for now, can’t we just… do this?” She gestures at the world they’ve dropped into today; the sunshine, the birds, the green slopes rising to shining white peaks. “Because soon we won’t have the chance.”

 

“Don’t say that.”

 

“You know it’s true.”

 

“It shouldn’t have to be.”

 

“Sweetie… that’s not the point.” She watches him stuff the last of his ice cream cone into his mouth in an attempt to stall the conversation, and doesn’t let him. “Promise me, Doctor. These last few months are going to be about us spending time together. Anything else is going to make this a wasted opportunity, and we’re both going to regret it.”

 

He closes his eyes. Finally, he nods slowly.

 

“Good.” River licks her ice cream, grins, and shoves him into the water.

 

The _splash_ is immensely satisfying, as is the look on his face as he resurfaces. “River!”

 

“What?” she asks innocently. “You had ice cream on your trousers, they needed a wash.”

 

“River!”

 

She giggles, sticking her tongue into the ice cream cone in search of the last bit of ice cream, when she feels his cold fingers wrap around her ankle and pull her down into the river. The water is cold and she screeches, trying in vain to hold her hand above the water to keep the ice cream from falling in and dissolving. She slips on one of the riverbed’s large stones and somehow manages to smear the whole thing down her front.

 

“Now look who needs a wash,” the Doctor says, eyeing her chest.

 

“Still you,” River declares, stripping out of her dress and flinging it back onto the shore. “Look at you gawking, you dirty old man.” Though strictly speaking it’s unnecessary she goes the whole hog, peeling her underwear off her goose-pimpled skin and tossing it up onto the dress. “Fancy a swim?”

 

She’s off before he can answer, leaping into the middle of the river and letting the current take her. After some swearing and splashing behind her he eventually pulls up by her side, similarly divested of clothing. “There are more fun things I could think of to do,” he comments. His teeth are chattering but River is pretty sure that’s just for show; now that she’s moving a bit the cold isn’t quite so bad.

 

“Race you to the waterfall,” she says, abandoning her leisurely pace.

 

“You’re insane!” the Doctor complains, though he keeps up quite admirably.

 

“That’s why you love me!”

 

“I must be insane too,” he mutters.

 

“That’s why I married you.”

 

“Waterfall then, eh?” he says. He probably hopes she was joking.

 

“Coming up fast now,” she says, nodding at the bend in the river ahead of them.

 

“And how do you know this, exactly?”

 

“Stands to reason, doesn’t it?”

 

She doesn’t tell him she brought up a map of the surrounding area while he was busy fetching ice cream cones. She _definitely_ doesn’t tell him that she used her vortex manipulator to jump back in time, jump in the river for a practice run, dry off and step back inside without him ever noticing that she’d gone.

 

“Here it comes – grab onto that tree in the middle!”

 

It doesn’t quite go to plan, but they survive.

 

River grabs the tree, the Doctor grabs River’s leg, pulling her down on top of him in the pool beneath, where they both pick up some scrapes and bruises from the rocks at the bottom. They crawl spluttering and laughing back to shore.

 

River thinks scrapes and bruises are quite sexy.

 

The Doctor seems to agree.

 

They make love on the grass, and the sun dries their skin.

 

* * *

 

They hardly spend any time on Darillium in their last few weeks, opting instead to cheat and spend months at a time at the other end of time and space, solving mysteries and chasing monsters and pretending not to notice how desperate and frenetic they’re becoming in everything they do.

 

River has never felt so happy and so sad at the same time. The Doctor has kept his promise; she’s his sole focus and she loves it and she loves him and she hates that it’s all going to end. She’s trying to be a grown-up about it but every now and then she just wants to cry out to the universe that it’s _not fair_ , but she’s afraid of the universe crying back about how lucky she is to have had this long, and she does know that that’s true but at the same time she still wants more. She still wants forever.

 

And still the clock keeps ticking, the hourglass emptying and their precious moments trickling away. They can slow it down but they can’t ever stop it. Sooner or later this life they have built will have to end.

 

* * *

 

“How much longer?”

 

River stands with the older Doctor on the balcony in the stark sunlight, leaning on the railing and gazing out at the Towers.

 

“Three and a half hours,” she answers, and she ignores the stinging in her eyes.

 

“It’s going to be okay,” he promises.

 

She risks a glance at him. He’s not looking at her, or the Towers, but off to the side – like he does in this body when he has to admit that he has emotions.

 

“I’ve almost figured it out,” he continues. “I will fix this. I promise. Speaking of which, I need your shoe.”

 

River raises her eyebrows, but steps out of her shoes obligingly. They’ve been killing her feet lately, anyway. “Which one?”

 

“The right,” he says, bending down to reach for it himself. He unscrews the heel and taps it against the palm of his hand.

 

A miniature scanner, twin of the one they found in the Tower all those years ago, falls out and glints in the sunlight.

 

River can’t explain the rush of suspicion that floods over her as she watches him hold it reverentially – for the shoes to transport her the way they do they’d have to have some way to detect her physical characteristics, that doesn’t come as a surprise… still, something in her gut is making a lot of noise all of a sudden, but her brain doesn’t want to know.

 

The Doctor produces his screwdriver and scans the device for a moment before inserting it back into its hiding place and putting the shoe back together.

 

“There,” he says, kneeling to help her slip her foot back in, as carefully as a prince looking for his Cinderella. “All done.”

 

“ _What_ is all done?” she demands, her gut still nagging at her.

 

“I told you,” he says. “I’m fixing things.”

 

River narrows her eyes. “What happened to ‘not everything can be avoided’, sweetie?” she asks softly.

 

“We’re not avoiding anything,” he says shortly. “Things will happen. But then…”

 

“Then what?”

 

He grimaces, shuffling his feet, and she can tell the word _spoilers_ is on the tip of his reluctant tongue.

 

River takes pity, and kisses him.

 

* * *

 

It’s two hours before dawn, and the Doctor leads her by the hand into the back garden and pulls her down onto a blanket spread over the grass. They gaze up at the sky, fingers intertwined, and River tries not to cry. There’ll be time enough for that later – she wants to enjoy these last few moments together without thinking about a future without them.

 

She snuggles closer to him and he tightens his grip on her hand. This is so _stupid_ , and she wonders for the millionth time what is going to happen to rip them apart, because she sure as hell isn’t going to go willingly.

 

“Hush now,” the Doctor whispers, smoothing over her knuckles with his fingertips.

 

“I didn’t say anything,” River protests, resting her cheek against his shoulder.

 

“You didn’t need to.” The Doctor tuts, and rummages with his free hand in the inside pocket of his suit jacket. That stupid suit is making her sentimental. It’s the only one he owns; of course it’s the same one as he wore on that happier, long ago first night here.

 

She needs to stop calling things stupid, she decides. Just as soon as they stop _being_ stupid.

 

“I found out about the constellations for you,” the Doctor says. He holds a small book up above their faces, and points at the sky. “You see the triangle there? That one is known as the Pyramid.” He presses the book into her free hand, and points again. “That one is the Storm Cage.” He turns his head to look at her, and she looks back at him. “Then the Bowtie.”

 

She can’t help it any more. The tears trickle and then stream from her eyes, and she tries desperately to blink them away and to follow the Doctor’s fingers as he points at shapes in every part of the sky.

 

“The Diary,” he continues. “The Byzantium. Cleopatra. The Moon. The Lipstick, The Handcuffs. The Cottage.”

 

“Doctor…”

 

He turns to look at her again, gauging her reaction.

 

“You made this planet, didn’t you,” she states.

 

“No,” he says dismissively, shaking his head – until a grin spreads over his face. “But I think I will.”

 

River laughs. “What the hell for?”

 

The Doctor rolls his eyes fondly. “For you, of course.” He squeezes her hand, and brings it up to kiss her knuckles. “Anything for you.”

 

Her laugh turns into an indulgent snort. “It’s a very impressive anniversary present, I’ll give you that.”

 

“You ain’t seen nothing yet,” he promises.

 

“Oh, I’ve seen a few things.” Some of which still worry her, but she’s not about to spoil the moment by mentioning them. He would only reply with _spoilers_.

 

She kisses him, while she still has the chance, under the stars that tell their story all across the sky.

 

The sky…

 

There’s an orange glow on the horizon.

 

The _northern_ horizon.

 

River frowns, sitting up and squinting into the distance. “That’s not the sun.”

 

She offers the Doctor her hand as they both get to their feet; before they can even stand up straight the earth starts to shake underneath them.

 

“Into the TARDIS!” the Doctor cries, pulling her across the lawn.

 

River stumbles as the ground shakes again and her right shoe falls off; rather than go back to retrieve it she kicks the other one off as well and continues to run.

 

The Doctor reaches the TARDIS and pushes the door open; another tremble sends them both tumbling into the control room.

 

“What’s going on?” River demands, clutching the nearest railing and pulling herself upright.

 

“Something’s wrong with the planet!” the Doctor yells. He’s managed to pull himself up on the console and is staring at a screen.

 

“The planet that you made?” River yells back. She stumbles back to the door and kicks it shut.

 

“Yeah, that one!”

 

The ground shakes again and River launches herself in the direction of the console as well. She grabs the controls and sets the TARDIS in motion, sending them several hundred feet into the air. Abruptly, the shaking stops.

 

“Thanks,” the Doctor says distractedly, eyes still glued to the screen as his hands dance across buttons and levers.

 

River dusts herself off and heads back to the doors, opening them wide and surveying the scene below.

 

The red glow on the horizon intensifies as lava spews high into the air.

 

“What can we do?” River demands. They’re too high up to see anyone on the ground below, but the town they’ve called home for the last two and a half decades is spread out under her feet. There are five thousand people down there. If the rest of the planet is similarly affected that puts about two million people in danger – a tiny population compared to some planets, but far from insignificant.

 

“We need to evacuate the planet.” The Doctor joins her at the door, frowning as he looks out.

 

“How?”

 

“We need to think of something.”

 

She doesn’t like the look on his face.

 

They’re both distracted by a sudden whistling sound coming from the ground; it takes River a moment to spot it, but when she does she gasps.

 

A house is rising up from the town. Shielding expands automatically over the windows and other areas as the dwelling speeds up, sealing and protecting it as it reaches escape velocity and zooms past the TARDIS and out into the sky.

 

River is about to comment when another one zooms past, and then several more, and then for one long moment the air is full of flying houses launching themselves up into space. Off in the distance black dots fly upwards in the vicinity of the nearest village, and she can just make out a cloud of ascending specks over the next town.

 

“Perhaps,” the Doctor says, “I already did think of something.”

 

River nods, suddenly aware of the adrenaline flooding her system now that the need for it is abating. Her eyes sweep over the Towers just as another tremor makes them shake visibly. They probably won’t last long, she realises, with a pang of regret.

 

The stream of escaping houses is slowing down now, clearing the view of what remains of the town down below.

 

What also remains below is, conspicuously, the town hall.

 

It’s trying to take off, with its shielding half deployed and one corner bouncing uselessly on a misfiring thruster engine. River wonders how many people are in there.

 

The Doctor is already back at the controls.

 

They materialise on the stage at the back of the hall, which of course immediately makes them the centre of attention. The Doctor has a knack for that.

 

River does too, she has to admit.

 

“What’s going on?” she demands, striding out of the TARDIS and scanning the crowded room for anyone who looks like they might be able to answer.

 

The mayor is here, so she looks elsewhere.

 

A stressed looking young woman is working at a control panel in the wall, to absorbed in what she’s doing to acknowledge the TARDIS’ arrival. River decides she’s a likely candidate and marches over while the Doctor pulls his screwdriver out of his pocket and brandishes it at their surroundings in general. She hopes it will help.

 

“Excuse me,” she says to the woman who is elbow-deep in cables, “Can I help?”

 

“That depends,” says the woman, not taking her eyes off her work. “Can you bypass the failsafe mechanism while I connect the ignition cable to the power line?”

 

River brandishes her screwdriver. “Yes.”

 

A surprised look, and then a grin spreads over the other woman’s face. “Excellent. On three.”

 

River grins and catches the Doctor’s eye – and then something in her peripheral vision makes her look over his shoulder and out of the window.

 

“One.”

 

There’s a small cottage across the road, and a cat jumps out of an open window.

 

“Two.”

 

A small face appears, mouth open with horror, and a girl clambers out in pursuit.

 

“Three.”

 

River forces her gaze back to what she’s doing, to the screwdriver and the cables and the two hundred people she’s helping right now, and she bypasses the failsafe and the thrusters start making more encouraging noises under her feet…

 

And then they stop.

 

“Shit,” says the woman beside her.

 

River reconfigures her screwdriver and glances back out of the window just in time to see the cottage take off into the sky, leaving behind the small figure chasing the even smaller one.

 

When she looks back to her work there’s a second screwdriver pointed at the cabling, and the Doctor standing beside her.

 

“Go,” he says shortly.

 

She pockets the screwdriver immediately, turns around, plots her route…

 

“Where are your shoes?” he says suddenly.

 

“Left them in the garden, too cumbersome.” Can she sonic this window open or is she going to have to go through the door? Can’t risk breaking it if it’s going up into space…

 

She meets the Doctor’s eyes again to find them wide with horror.

 

“It’s okay,” she tells him. “Future you did… whatever you wanted to do with them.” She pauses – what the hell does she say next?

 

The Doctor swallows, nodding, digesting what she’s said. “Go,” he repeats, turning back to the control panel.

 

“…Right.”

 

A peck on the cheek and she’s running – the window frame is wood, it’s no use, she’ll have to go the long way around – and she’s glad she’s not wearing shoes because beautiful though they were they were not built for running – she’s halfway down the steps to the entryway when—

 

“River!”

 

She stops, held back by the tone of his voice, and turns back to look at him. He runs forward, grasping her hands in his and squeezing just a little too tight.

 

“You will see me again,” he promises. “Perhaps not this me, but I’ll come when you call, just like I always do.”

 

River feels tears welling up and blinks them back furiously as she leans in to kiss him. This is not how it was supposed to go. This is not how any last goodbye should go.

 

“You’ll see me too,” she says, cupping his face in her hands. One last, brief kiss and she doesn’t want it to end, but, “I have to go,” she tells him, and she turns and runs through the doors and after the girl before either of them can think of any more last words.

 

Her quarry chases the cat through the centre of town and out the other side. River gains on her slowly but surely, conscious of the town hall still standing firmly behind her, hoping the Doctor isn’t going to be so stupid as to try and wait for her. There are precious few buildings left out here but the wretched creature finds a tree in someone’s back garden and makes a mad dash for it; the girl at last catches up to it, begging and cajoling the terrified animal, until River runs up behind her.

 

River knows without exchanging a word with her that she’s going to have two choices: carry the child screaming and struggling all the way to safety, or rescue the damned cat.

 

It’s climbed too far for her to reach easily. Shaking the tree will likely just make it dig its claws in further. She could climb up after it but then she’d have to somehow grab the thing and carry it back down one-handed.

 

The girl’s cries have by now become incoherent.

 

River sets her jaw and pulls her screwdriver from her pocket. If she can gauge the frequency just right, give the cat enough of a sonic shock to make it let go…

 

“Cover your ears,” she tells the girl, who stares at her dumbly.

 

“…Or not.” River sighs, turning back to the cat.

 

The shrill sound the screwdriver emits when she activates it makes her skin crawl, but it has the desired effect: the distressed feline becomes even more distressed, loses its grip on the branch, and tumbles down into River’s arms, where it magically transforms from a cat into a mess of claws and fur and teeth and general outrage.

 

She manages to get a more or less secure grip on it as the house nearest to them takes off into the sky, and she does a survey of their surroundings.

 

The closest remaining house is her very own cottage.

 

“Ha,” River murmurs. Then, more authoritatively, “This way!”

 

She starts running and the girl follows her, whether because she’s finally decided to use some common sense or because River is now holding the cat, she’s not sure.

 

The ground is becoming more and more unstable under her bare feet, the sky full of escaping houses and smoke in equal measures, and by the time they reach the front door the smell of sulphur from the volcanoes is becoming unbearable. River kicks it open, throwing the cat through the first open door off the hallway and turning back only to have the girl push past her, still in pursuit of her cat.

 

River hopes the cat appreciates the two humanoids risking their lives for it. She suspects not.

 

She closes the front door and immediately feels a new, different rumbling under her feet. Moments later the cottage takes off and launches itself into the sky.

 

River runs to the nearest window, watching as the little garden she and the Doctor were lying in only an hour ago recedes rapidly, fading into insignificance in a wider landscape of destruction. As her eyes find the town hall its thrusters finally fire, only for her to see it rush past and overtake her in their upwards journey.

 

She hopes that means the Doctor is safe.

 

As the town hall fades from view above her she looks down again at what’s left of her home. One or two more buildings launch down below, but the exodus is otherwise complete, just in time as a great chasm splits the town down the centre and belches up lava.

 

The Towers stand tall, until she sees them shake visibly and one after another they crumble into the smoke below.

 

* * *

 

River eventually finds a new plot of land for her home, in a little village just outside Armstrong City on Luna.

 

She takes a job with the university and sets about setting herself up with an actual, real life again. She feels like she’s woken up from a fairy tale and is having trouble fitting back into reality.

 

He said she would see him again. All she has to do is call.

 

But there’s only one empty page left in her diary. One final adventure, and then that, one way or another, is going to be that.

 

So she doesn’t call.

 

She throws herself into academia instead, immersing herself in archaeology in a way she didn’t even as a student, and she lets her job consume her so that perhaps she can start to forget that the home she lives in on her own used to be the one she shared with him. She fills the little spare time she has with whatever else she can find to hold her interest; gardening, chess, languages, martial arts. She hones all her skills more finely than she ever has before, and she picks up new ones whenever she feels she’s slowing down.

 

And she doesn’t call.

 

She doesn’t call when she’s neck-deep in Daleks and could really use a hand in getting out again.

 

She doesn’t call when she finds a gorgeous new little café that she knows he would love.

 

She doesn’t call when she’s lying alone in their bed, imagining that his pillow might still smell of him.

 

She doesn’t call until she’s heading for the Library, and she tells herself it’s because this kind of mystery is exactly his cup of tea, but somewhere in the back of her mind she can’t help but remember stepping out of the TARDIS on top of endless stacks of books, and her favourite floppy-haired idiot sitting in front of her with a look on his face that she doesn’t like and can’t read but which makes her inexplicably, unbearably sad.

 

She knows something bad is coming. But she calls him anyway.

 

* * *

 

In the end, dying doesn’t hurt as much as she expects it to. But the look on his face, the fact that it’s this face he’s wearing, the knowledge of what this must have done to him, to their whole crazy, frustrating, wonderful time together…

 

That hurts.

 

That hurts for a long time.

 

* * *

 

But then…

 

* * *

 

One moment she’s debating the merits of Voltaire with Miss Evangelista, the next she’s…

 

_Alive._

 

For some reason that realisation makes her struggle to breathe, as if she’s suddenly remembered how very important that is when you’re alive and she doesn’t want to be not alive again because she’s neglected to inhale oxygen. It takes a moment to get the breathing sorted out properly; she’s not used to it any more.

 

She’s in a big, familiar space, looking up at a domed ceiling crawling with cables and circuits.

 

Realisation hits.

 

She looks across the room to see the Doctor striding towards her, and she finally knows what this whole damned planetary contraption is _for._

 

He grins at her and reaches out as he steps closer, and River collapses into his arms.

 

“Oh,” she gasps.

 

“Hush,” the Doctor whispers, burying his face in her hair.

 

“You’re such a…”

 

“Genius?” he murmurs.

 

“You know this whole planet is going to come apart though,” she says, remembering; remembering too much, all at once.

 

The Doctor shrugs, pulling her closer. “We’ll build another.”

 

She gasps again, she can’t help herself, but somewhere in there is the beginning of a laugh.

 

And they start again.


End file.
